


Searching for Life Along the Ocean Floor

by burymeonpluto



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Conversations, Gen, One Shot, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 08:52:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15336273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burymeonpluto/pseuds/burymeonpluto
Summary: When the Islands fell, they took everything with them. He’ll do anything to reach them again. But if you want to dive that deep into the darkness, you must first know the darkness. Fear and hesitation will only tether you to the surface.Command the shadows. Let them draw you in.“The shadows you’ve been walking with keep growing taller, you know. One of these days, it might be enough to sink an entire world.”





	Searching for Life Along the Ocean Floor

  
  
  
  
There’s only enough time for a moment’s rest. While Leon finishes the upgrades on their loaned gummi ship, Riku falls back to his tiny room aboard the equally tiny vessel. It’s a room with nothing but a bed, a table outfitted as a desk, and a half-empty trunk filled with his meager belongings. The culmination of three years of wandering from world to world like an uncertain river, unable to find the sea.  
  
It isn’t impressive.  
  
He sits on the edge of the bed and stares at the wall. A dusty blanket from Agrabah creases beneath his weight. It sparks a memory or two. A gift from the princess—a reward for saving her kingdom, right before he found the dark heart of her world and split it open without a second thought. He never cared much for the blanket, anyway.  
  
He tries to relax. There isn’t much time. He’ll be shoved back into the captain’s chair in just a few minutes. He needs to retreat for a while.  
  
Then Sora appears in the doorway. He has a bad habit of showing up out of nowhere.  
  
“Taking a break?” Sora asks with a teasing grin on his face.  
  
“I’m trying to.”  
  
He nods slowly, walking over and sitting on the table-desk. His yellow sneakers don’t even touch the floor. “Yeah. That last battle was pretty tough.”  
  
“They’re all like that.”  
  
He snorts. “Since when were you so modest?”  
  
Riku merely shrugs. He wouldn’t exactly call overconfidence a good thing, either. It’s gotten him into so much trouble in the past.  
  
Sora props his chin in his hand. “You should be proud. You’ve gotten so strong.”  
  
“I may be stronger than I was before, but I’m still completely helpless.”  
  
“There you go again,” he rolls his eyes. “Do you not remember what just happened? The giant space monster?” Such emphasis. Riku doesn’t answer. Of course he remembers. “How about that time in Twilight Town? That cyclone made of heartless? You and Leon sliced it in half!”  
  
He smirks at Sora’s enthusiasm alone—gushing like he’s reading an exciting comic book.  
  
“And then _you_ pushed them back through that dark portal!” he continues, leaning forward challengingly.  
  
“The heartless only obey me because they recognize me as one of their own,” he mutters. “Just another creature of the darkness.”  
  
Sora totally ignores that excuse. Typical. “That was awesome! I didn’t even think it was possible!”  
  
He laughs through his nose. “Since when have you ever given up on the impossible? Last time I checked, you still believed in Santa Claus.”  
  
Sora wags a defiant finger in Riku’s face. “Hey! He’s real. I can prove it.”  
  
“That, I’d like to see.”  
  
He seems to take that as a challenge, and jumps to his feet. “Then, let’s go! Right now. His world’s not too far from here.”  
  
Riku rolls his eyes. “There are more important things we need to worry about right now.”  
  
“Ah, man,” Sora deflates. “Fine. You’re always so serious,” he grumbles, settling back onto the top of the desk. “But we’re going later! And then you’ll be sorry!”  
  
“You think so?”  
  
“Santa never forgets!”  
  
He can only laugh at that.  
  
Sora has this satisfied look on his face, as if that laugh was all he wanted. He picks up a pen from the desk and twirls it in his fingers. It’s a fancy fountain pen they’d picked up in some remote, nautical world called Port Royal. “So, where are you off to now, Captain?”  
  
“For the last time, I’m not a pirate captain.”  
  
Sora cackles. “You sure look like one to me.”  
  
Riku only pulls a hand down his face. He’s learned that this is an unwinnable argument.  
  
“A ship of misfits… a complete disregard for order…” he starts counting off on his fingers, “a shady, mysterious mission…”  
  
“It isn’t mysterious.”  
  
“Oh, but you didn’t disagree with anything else,” Sora grins.  
  
He decides to just ignore it. “There’s nothing mysterious about it. We’re only trying to find what we’ve lost.”  
  
“Like a buried treasure?” he keeps pushing, and for some reason, Riku feels something within him snap.  
  
“It’s much more important than something like that,” he spits, and Sora reels back. “After our world fell… I remember thinking that I’d never see you again. And then I woke up and couldn’t find you…” When all he could see was the darkened sky of Traverse Town above him…  He shakes the unpleasant memories from his head. “Really, it’s a miracle I’ve made it this far.”  
  
“That’s because you’ve had others to lean on,” Sora smiles. “You, Leon, and Yuffie make a good team. You really get things done.”  
  
Yeah, right. “We’re messy and stumbling at every step.”  
  
“But you’re _getting_ _somewhere_ ,” he adds. Riku can’t argue with that. “Would you rather still be stuck in Traverse Town?”  
  
What a nightmare that would be. “Of course not.”  
  
Sora absently scratches his cheek. “Well, once you got the keyblade, I guess you really wouldn’t have been stuck there either. But I wonder… without Leon and Yuffie…”  
  
“Without them, would I have ever gotten the keyblade at all?” He finishes Sora’s thought. “I might’ve fallen completely to the darkness. I was already on my way. My heart was weak back then, and I’d just lost everything.” A bitter smile slices his face. “Even you would’ve given up on me, in that sorry state…”  
  
Sora bursts out laughing. “No way. I’d drag you back no matter what.”  
  
His own laugh is halfhearted. “Yeah. You would.”  
  
“But I didn’t have to. You didn’t fall. Everything worked out!” he exclaims. How simplistic. That glosses over a lot of time and struggle, and all the times Leon and Riku crossed swords for one reason or another. Sora never liked dwelling on the drudgery. “You’re like a legend now, you know. The Dark Keyblade Master—travelling through the worlds like a mysterious shadow!”  
  
“Yeah, right,” Riku scoffs.  
  
Sora springs forward, “I’m serious!” Then he throws his hands up, and puts on a lower, more dramatic tone: “You can hear the whispering across the worlds… A figure in black, fighting darkness with darkness, searching the worlds with an iron conviction! But what is he searching for? Is it power? Lost love? No one really knows. No one can see his heart!”  
  
“Sora.”  
  
He shrugs. “Well, when you spend all of your time skulking in the dark doing shady things, people are going to invent their own story.” Is that what he’d call it? “But really… it’s been so long, even I’m starting to forget what you’re fighting for. Is it to fend off the darkness?”  
  
Riku laughs. “It’s nothing noble like that. Besides, I use the darkness. Wouldn’t that be hypocritical?”  
  
“But you don’t let it use you back,” Sora counters.  
  
“No.” Eyes slip down to the floor. “Not anymore.”  
  
“Everyone’s got a little darkness, and everyone’s got a little light. I think… as long as we don’t let it control us, we’ll be okay.”  
  
“That’s so like you,” he smirks.  
  
Sora pulls a bashful hand behind his head. “C’mon, I’m being serious.” Riku doesn’t say anything. What could he? Sora stares him down with unyielding blue eyes. “So… you never answered me. What are you fighting for?”  
  
He feels like he asks himself the same question each and every day. Every time he feels the weight of the keyblade in his hand. With every new world. With each new face. With every writhing shadow. On and on in that grueling, tedious cycle with only the vague hope that someday soon it’ll all be over, and he can finally lay his head on the sand and dissolve into the sea.  
  
The same question. The same answer. “For home.”  
  
Sora’s lip twitches upward. “For that place? But I thought you couldn’t wait to leave. You talked about sailing away constantly.”  
  
“It wasn’t the island I was running away from,” he mumbles. “You should know that by now. It’s been long enough.”  
  
He nods solemnly. There’s a more strained look shadowing his face. “Yeah… We haven’t seen home in a while.”  
  
“Three years,” Riku specifies.  
  
“Think we’ll ever make it back?”  
  
“We will,” he says, and he means it. With everything he has. “Soon. I’ll make sure of it.”  
  
Sora shrugs again. It’s so easy and free. “Okay. I trust you.”  
  
“After everything that’s happened, you probably shouldn’t.”  
  
“Eh, maybe,” he admits. Wow. He wasn’t supposed to agree so easily. “But you’re my best friend, so I’ll trust you anyway. Even if you _do_ spend all your time skulking in the dark and doing shady things. ”  
  
“’Shady’?” he echoes. Sora keeps using that word, but Riku is not entirely sure what he means by it.  
  
His tone turns low and serious. “The shadows you’ve been walking with keep growing taller, you know. One of these days, it might be enough to sink an entire world.”  
  
In that case, he’d be the one going down with the ship. To follow it down. To where everything goes. Across this stupid metaphysical divide that seems to govern and swallow everything that exists. “If the worlds are going to fall, then they should all fall. Then they won’t be disconnected anymore. They’ll be together in the darkness.”  
  
There’s a strange, stony expression lining Sora’s face. “Or, you could try bringing all the fallen worlds _back_.”  
  
“That’s _your_ level of heroism. There’s no way anyone but you would be able to pull that off.”  
  
“You’ve never tried! Never even thought about it!”  
  
“Because I’m not cut out for that sort of thing.”  Riku dismisses it easily. “I’m not going around trying to save anyone. I’m only trying to fix all of my own mistakes. They’re my responsibilities. They are all I’m worth.”  
  
“You mean they’re all you can be bothered with,” Sora mutters.  
  
“Even if that’s true, I’ve made my choice.”  
  
“And even if _that’s_ true, you’ve still managed to help people along the way. Whether you like it or not. Just look at your group!”  
  
Riku’s laugh is almost spiteful. “I’m nothing but a transporter.”  
  
“Oh, come on,” he grumbles, but his grin betrays him. “ Were you always this stubborn?”  
  
“You should know better than anyone.”  
  
“Right…” Sora leans back, and the mirth slowly evaporates from his face. He gazes with thoughtful eyes. That uncharacteristic frown is barely there. “Ya know, Riku, sometimes I worry about you. What you’re doing now… are you sure this is right?”  
  
He can only stare down at his hands. The material of his gloves creaks as threaded fingers tighten. “It’s the only path left for me.”  
  
“I wonder about that.”  
  
“You have for a few years now.”  
  
“And are you any closer?”  
  
There’s hardly any hesitation. “I am,” he declares. “It’s almost over. Everything… will be finished soon.”  
  
Sora huffs and folds his arms. This time he doesn’t believe him. “I hope so.”  
  
“You’ll be back on that beach before you know it.”  
  
A smirk creases his face. He still doesn’t fully believe it, but he wants to. He can’t say anything against it.  
  
Even if he started to, he’d be interrupted by the door slamming open. Yuffie stands proudly on the other side, eyes sparkling with energy. “We’re ready to go!” she chirps. Her face scrunches up as she scans the tiny room. “Huh. Were you talking to someone just now?”  
  
Riku glances back to the desk. It’s empty. Sora is gone.  
  
No, he was never there at all.  
  
“I wasn’t,” Riku mutters. “Let’s go.”  


X

**Author's Note:**

> Well. There’s definitely a lot here to unpack. This is just a tiny piece of an AU. I wrote it while fighting through a bout of writer’s block on my other ideas (and after watching Space Pirate Captain Harlock. hoo boy.)… Maybe I’ll fully flesh this out into a longfic one day, but I need to finish everything else first! Part of me worries if this is too vague, but then that same part also says it’s too straightforward. So, if it wasn’t clear, Sora fell with the world. Three years prior. Taste that delicious mental instability. 
> 
> Anyway, yeah. Tell me what you think. I just did this for fun. It actually took longer for me to think of a title than it did for me to write the damned thing. No joke.


End file.
